For now though, it’s time to get back to working on my own stuff. I have recently revamped both of my websites, gotten a new computer and some new gear and am ready to get to work on a few things:

First & foremost I am ready to start getting back into composing for independent film, TV, web-related multimedia, ads, games, you name it. Anything that needs music to be a part of the overall picture. If anyone out there knows someone looking for original music for their project, either here in Arizona or somewhere in cyberspace, please send that person my way. I have a separate site dedicated to this aspect of my musical personality and it is called PJGMUSIC.COM. Please pay it a visit sometime.

Next, I have a few personal projects. One of them is my little tribute to lounge, kitsch, space-age pop, exotica and other sounds of yesteryear. I have dubbed it Xotik Planet and you can hear the first tune from this project, entitled “The Launch Pad” on my music page. Eventually the project will get it’s own page on this site when there’s a bit more material.

2nd, one of the byproducts of my most recent cover band is that I got to work with my wife Shawn, who sang back up vocals in the band.  We’ve collaborated on little things here and there before, but this was the first time that we were actively involved in an ongoing project, and since it did not result in us doing violence upon each other, we figured it might be time to branch out and see what else comes of it.  We’ve got a few ideas that we will hopefully start developing and unveiling soon; the sound is still a bit undefined but will incorporate elements of desert rock, alt-country, shoegaze and who knows what else by the time we’re done with it.  The first song will probably be a cover, but one by a song and artist we both love and done our own way.

Last, but certainly not least, I am hoping that my bandmates in The Last Dance and I will start exchanging some ideas and get around to doing a new album between now and next year.  It’s been pretty slow in the TLD camp for a while now.  After so many years though, people have a need to focus on other areas of their lives, whether it be family, work, personal projects etc.  This has certainly been true in our case, but we have enough history with each other that we can go for long periods without even seeing each other and then get back together from time to time without too much difficulty.  The band may never resume the recording and touring pace of the past, but I’m sure we’ve still got some music and shows in us.  I’ll keep you posted on how things develop with that.

Wow, that was practically a book for me!  Hope I managed to keep at least some of you interested.  Thanks for reading!

The terrain here is beautiful in a very sparse and barren kind of way.  Lots of open space, blue skies and greener than you might think a desert would be.  I actually like the fact that here in Tucson, people seemed to have adapted to their environment rather than trying to force their environment to adapt to them.  Case in point, you won’t see a lot of green grassy lawns here like you do in California, but the truth is that you wouldn’t really see that in many parts of California either were it not for irrigation.  They spend a ton of money and waste a lot of water to make their lawns green and pretty there, probably one of the many reasons it costs so damn much to live there.  Most lawns here have the natural vegetation of the area, some of which is actually green, but most of it is course and spiny; cactus, shrubs, that kind of thing, not really your typical American Dream lawn. Beautiful in it’s own other-worldy way though.  Fine with me, one less thing to have to worry about maintaining….. The community we live in has a pool which I try to use almost daily.  It’s generally pretty sunny and warm here, actually it’s getting quite hot these days.  It’s a dry heat where you bake more than boil, not for everyone for sure but it suits me just fine.  I like this place……

I’ve bought myself a new bass, it’s an Ibanez ATK 305 5 string bass which was supposed to be a backup bass since I’m playing a lot, but I like it so much more than my Fernandes Gravity that it’s become my main bass and I will most likely try to sell the Fernandes and get something else entirely.  Or not.  It’s nice to have options!  I also bought myself a Schecter Ultra III guitar which will be the perfect tool for the spacy, twangy sounds I plan to be exploring over the next year or so.  I’ve also sold a bunch of gear I didn’t use and plan on unloading and acquiring even more stuff.  Typical gearhead musician……

My main project these days is updating both this website and my composition site and of course continuing to network and hopefully drum up more work.  So if you know anyone who needs a composer for their film, website or other multimedia project, send them my way.  Likewise, if anyone in the Tucson area needs a bassist or guitarist for their project,  I might be able to lend a hand…….

That’s about all I have time for right now.

Seems there is a museum in Switzerland called Maison d’Ailleurs that is the world’s only museum dedicated exclusively to Science Fiction in all of its many manifestations. Literature, film, etc. They are going to be doing an exhibit called, appropriately enough, Music & Science Fiction that will run from March to August of this year 2010. The exhibit will explore the role that music has played in the sci-fi genre, whether it’s the soundtrack music to sci-fi films or music and instruments that have come to be associated in some way with science fiction, such as the Theremin etc.

Anyway, as part of this exhibit, the museum is going to releasing a CD of sci-fi themed music and I submitted a piece for it and it was accepted! I have always been a fan of the cheesy, yet oh so fun lounge music of the 50′s and beyond, particularly a sub-genre that has come to be known as space-age pop or space-age bachelor pad music. Check out luxuriamusic.com or the Secret Agent channel of somafm.com to hear some of what I’m talking about.

So, I wrote a tune that was meant to be my semi-modern re-interpretation and homage to that glorious and campy era when stereophonic sound, space travel and “modern” sounds were all brought together by people such as Juan Garcia Esquivel and Les Baxter and later re-invigorated by groups like Combustible Edison and Stereolab.

I have named the tune “The Launch Pad” and it features some groovy 60′s style tremolo guitar, a touch of theremin and some “spacy” sounds bouncing around the stereo spectrum. I had so much fun writing this that I am planning an entire album of this kind of stuff. I may even try to do some live performances with funky lighting, lava lamps and go-go girls if all goes well, but that will come much later if at all.

In the meantime, check out the tune and check out the museum’s website. I am supposed to receive copies of the CD sometime this year and might even be able to make some of them available to anyone who is interested. And of course, if you live in or near Switzerland, or happen to be going there on vacation, drop by the museum and check out the exhibit for yourself.

One last note: Thanks again to my good friend Jeff Diehm for telling me about this project. In addition to his role as singer of The Last Dance, Jeff has his own project called Autumn Cannibals and it is very cool. Check it out!

I like it.  It’s cross-platform and it seems to do the job.  Plus I get 2 Gig for free.  The paid options aren’t bad either, a few different choices, but right now the free 2 Gigs works for me.  Click on the link above.  It’ll tell them I sent you and I will be handsomely rewarded or so they say……

I haven’t really left the house for the last 2 weeks other than a trip back to CA to play a gig with TLD on Halloween.  Tonight I am supposed to meet up with a new friend who will show me around and tell me a bit about the music scene here.  Tomorrow night Shawn & I are going to see the Tucson band Calexico, members of whom have played with Neko Case, another favorite of ours.  Calexico are probably Tucsons best known musical export at the moment, indie rock with a southwestern flavor.  I like them quite a bit.  They will be playing in a nice old theater called the Rialto and the stage is supposed to be set up with a Dia De Los Muertos kind of theme.  Looking forward to it.

That’s about it for now.  I will try to blog more often if it seems like it’s worth it.  I don’t really expect to be doing much music wise until next year.  Right now, I am focusing on meeting other musicians and possibly getting some cover band gigs going to make some money and keep the playing chops in shape.  Next year, TLD will probably start recording again, doing a new album over long distance, and who knows what other situations are on the horizon.  Hopefully the change in scenery and renewed optimism in our household will help me dust off the creative cobwebs.  I have felt pretty stagnant the last year and a half, haven’t really had the desire or motivation to create at all.  I’m trying to find that spark again and get back to the basics.  But first, time to swim while the weather is still warm…..

Today, in addition to taking stuff apart and putting it in boxes, I messed around with a wordpress plugin called tweetable

The neat thing about it is that it lets me access twitter from wordpress and do the whole tweet thing.  It also creates little links to blog posts that can also be seen on twitter and link back to here.

By integrating some facebook and myspace apps and widgets and whatnot, I think I have finally found a way to do everything from one place, allowing me to post one tweet or one blog and have them show up everywhere else.  Finally.  Now, should I decide that I have something important enough to share, I can write it once, post it, and be done without signing into all these stupid programs.

And lest you think that now that I am actually blogging and communicating more, that it somehow means that I find myspace, facebook and all these other colossal time wasters less annoying …..   Let me assure you that I indeed find them to be as much of a nuisance as  I did before, but they have obviously become a necessary evil if one wishes to maintain even the most tenuous  links with the outside world and fellow human beings, particularly the ones we refer to as friends…..